#Avignon is next and I am in the main street leading to a square full of restaurants with a Moroccan theme, every third restaurant serves tajines. I drop off my bags in a lovely hotel with curliqued iron around the balconies and head off to the famous market. It's amazing. My camera at the ready, I meet an American woman doing the same and we discuss the fact that we feel bad taking photos and not buying the produce so we usually snap when the owner is serving or has stepped away. We're amazed by the stunning bowls of flavoured salts - rose, lavender, all varieties of herbs mixed in and coloured mounds of perfumed spices. The seafood stalls are unbelievable, baskets of edible shellfish are displayed on dark olive green seaweed, sea urchins and multi coloured striped prawns cheek to cheek on ice. Four different types of asparagus are organised in wooden crates; long thin pale violet coloured aubergine like eels glow in a basket; creamy coloured turnips like breasts with pert nipples; lemon and orange candied peels are tied in bunches with twine. I haunt the retro shops, stopping to have the anise flavoured syrup served with a jug of iced water.
I lunch in the main square on chicken and preserved lemon tajine and then venture off to see the main attraction - the Palais de Papes, a UNESCO heritage site. It dominates the town. The popes of Rome moved here in the 14th century away from the chaos that was happening in Rome but had to return after a long siege. It gradually deteriorated until the French Revolution when it became a military barracks and the beautifully decorated rooms were used for stables. It's huge and takes me more than an hour to walk around it but it has an eerie feel and I learn that it housed torture chambers as was a popular pastime for those who wanted information from those who were reluctant to give it. There's a new-fangled guidance system via earphones that bring certain parts of the place alive and the young ones are on it straight away but there's a few of us middle aged who are trying to work it out; a guard finally comes forward and explains with signage what to do. But in the end, having walked up a very high winding staircase to a tower with a view of the river, I've seen enough and head down to walk along the River.
It's beautiful, wide and lustrous between the banks, tiny daisies nestle in the grass, daffodils to the left of me. The air is smooth and sweet with spring. I enjoy being in nature as for most of the time I've been in the heart of old cities which have very few trees. I wander along until I come to the #PontDAvignon, of the famous song that we learnt at school for some strange reason - Sur le pont D'Avignon, L'on y danse, l'on y danse. Only a section of the 1177 bridge remains but in it's heyday in the Middle Ages, it was on the pilgrimage route from Spain to Italy. I was warned by the hotelier that the Mistral wind would come up in the afternoon and it does. If I commit a crime during the blowing of this wind, I'm likely to be exonerated. It gusts along the river and I head back into the narrow streets of the city, exploring the tourist and lavender shops so I'm not tempted to do anything, propelled by the negative ions of the wind.
The next day I'm on a day trip to #Arles, Vincent Van Gogh's place of abode for a couple of years of his life. It's Sunday and I have the town almost to myself, wandering the streets Vincent would have trodden and suddenly I come upon another Roman arena, which I was unaware of. The town skirts the enormous complex which once housed a medieval village.
I find the restaurant that makes reference to Vincent's famous painting - La Cafe de la Nuit, it's also the cafe that #VanGogh immortalised in Terrasse du Cafe le Soir. A huge pot of paella welcomes me at the entrance and I'm shown in and have a glass of wine whilst I wait. Van Gogh spent two months here being inspired, and painting with Paul Gauguin. It was here that he was at his most prolific until he had a psychotic episode during which he cut off his ear and sent it to a prostitute. He was institutionalised for a time after that.
I remember that during my days as a jeweller, I was asked by the Art Gallery of Sydney to design jewellery around the Van Gogh exhibition. I created earrings of a Sunflower and a chair hanging off, in homage to his bedroom and sunflower paintings. I sit where he may have sat and think how sad his life was and how in the end, at such an early age, he couldn't take living in this world any longer and suicided. In his lifetime, his paintings didn't sell and yet it was here that his paintings took on the intricate, circular swirls and patterns that defined his colourful Provencal work.
The Paella smells amazing. The proprietor, Spanish looking, tattooed, aproned and laughing with his kids who are chasing each other about the place, jokes with his wife who is managing the metre wide pan of paella. They look so happy, even thought they are working on a Sunday. He brings me a plate and is very proud of his wife's cooking, it's bursting with flavours, big hunks of chicken, juicy prawns and mussels, deep yellow from the saffron. The sun is warming the square, I can imagine what it was like when Vincent sat here chatting with Paul Gauguin, dusty, hot, a pitcher of wine beside them. I have another chat with the handsome, swarthy owner about the sadness of Vincent's life and then I'm off to find a souvenir but strangely, there seems mostly to be a wealth of morbid ear memorabilia; ear erasers, imprints of ears on leather notebooks, on tops of pens. Vincent wouldn't be impressed that our century has made his ear, his immortality, rather than his swirling starry skies.
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